Hon. Members: Object.
	 Second Reading deferred until Wednesday 13 January (Standing Order No. 20(2)).

Albert Owen: A happy new year to you, Mr. Speaker, and to all Members.
	The decision by Rio Tinto Alcan to cease production at Anglesey Aluminium has left a massive hole in the regional economy of north-west Wales, but I put on the record my thanks to the Wales Office and, indeed, to the Government for their efforts with their generous offer and intervention to keep production going. Unfortunately, the company's internal matters took precedent.
	Looking forward to the future use of the land on the Anglesey Aluminium site and the concept of green energy, does the Minister agree that we need to move forward to ensure that those jobs are kept on Anglesey? Will he meet the First Minister to ensure that priority is given to Anglesey?

Economic Activity

Peter Hain: I take the hon. Gentleman's point and if he has any concrete examples, I would be happy to take them up with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. The hon. Gentleman will understand the imperative of encouraging people to stay in the world of work. If, sadly, people have been made unemployed, what we are doing, which was not done in the 1980s and 1990s, is to provide them with job opportunities, training and support so that when vacancies arise-there are more and more of them in the Welsh economy generally- they can take that opportunity locally. About half the claimants leave jobseeker's allowance within three months and more than 70 per cent. within six months-a far better record than in the miserable Tory 1980s and 1990s.

Local Government Finance

Mr. Speaker: Order. There are far too many private conversations taking place in the Chamber. The House must come to order and I know that it will want to listen to the hon. Member for Croydon, Central.

John Robertson: Further to the questions asked by my hon. Friends the Members for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard), my hon. Friend knows that when larger employers close, it has the social effect of well paid jobs and apprenticeships being lost. What is he doing to ensure that well paid jobs and apprenticeships are maintained in affected areas?

Gordon Brown: Before listing my engagements, I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in paying tribute to the soldiers who have lost their lives in Afghanistan since we last met. They are: from 33 Engineer Regiment, explosive ordnance disposal, Sapper David Watson; from 2nd Battalion the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, Corporal Simon Hornby; from 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment, Private Robert Hayes; from the Parachute Regiment, Lance Corporal Tommy Brown; from 3rd Battalion The Rifles, Lance Corporal Christopher Roney and Rifleman Aidan Howell; and from 4th Regiment Royal Military Police, Lance Corporal Michael Pritchard. Our thoughts are with their families and friends, who can be rightly proud of the courage, dedication, bravery and sacrifice shown by these men. That sacrifice will never be forgotten. We have been reminded once again since the House last met that there are those who seek to harm us through terrorist incidents. We must remain vigilant and ever grateful to all those serving in Afghanistan and around the world working for the safety of the British people.
	I know that the House will also want to join me in sending our condolences to the wife and children of David Taylor who, sadly, died on Boxing day. He was a tremendous constituency Member of Parliament who thoroughly deserved the accolade of Back Bencher of the Year for his tireless work for the people of North-West Leicestershire. He will be greatly missed, not only by his family who are here in the House today, but by colleagues in Westminster and all his constituents.
	This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

Gordon Brown: The Governor of the Bank of England said:
	"The very significant policy actions taken in recent months will...stimulate a recovery in demand, output and employment."
	The IMF said that the UK
	"has shown a lot of leadership"-
	 [Interruption.] That was the managing director of the IMF. It also said:
	"The UK authorities' policy response to the deep recession...has been bold and wide ranging... The aggressive actions by the authorities have been successful in containing the crisis and averting a systemic breakdown."
	I could go through the others. The OECD said that the "fiscal stimulus" has "cushioned the downturn."
	It comes down to this: if we had taken the right hon. Gentleman's advice, there would have been no action and unemployment would have risen much faster. If we had taken his advice, the 200,000 small businesses that have benefited would not have done so. If we had taken his advice, we would be back to the '90s mortgage misery with repossessions. The Conservative party got wrong every decision on the recession and the recovery.

Gordon Brown: The person who was misleading the public was the right hon. Gentleman on Monday, about a married couples allowance. He said one thing on Monday morning, something different on Monday afternoon and something different on Monday evening, and then the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) who floated the policy, the former leader of the Conservative party, said that he had a private assurance of £4.9 billion being spent. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to reduce the deficit, presumably he does not want to spend £4.9 billion on a married couples allowance. If he wishes to reduce the deficit, presumably he will go ahead with the national insurance tax rise that we are proposing. If he wishes to reduce the deficit, he will not go ahead with his inheritance tax proposal, which he now says is his only pledge. We are reducing the deficit with a plan that includes tax rises, departmental cuts and protecting front-line services. The Conservatives would be cutting education services, police services and the main service in the country. Their policies are a change-a change back to the economics of the 1980s.  [ Interruption. ]

Gordon Brown: Let me just give another example for the right hon. Gentleman. Last night he was asked, "Are you committed to educational maintenance allowances?" What was his answer?
	"Let's just say I'm not uncommitted to it".
	He then said:
	"Well, we're in a state of quite severe flux on this whole area...so I can't give you a straight answer".
	Is this an Opposition party ready for government? It should go back to the drawing board and think again.

Gordon Brown: He is going to have to do better than that. He is going to have answer some questions on policy sometime. He got it wrong on the nationalisation of Northern Rock, he got it wrong on the fiscal stimulus for the recovery, he got it wrong on helping the unemployed, he got it wrong on helping home owners, he got it wrong on small businesses. He got every issue of the recession wrong. Nobody will trust him, not just on married couples allowance but on the economy at all.

Nicholas Clegg: I also add my own expressions of profound sympathy and condolence to the family and friends of the brave British soldiers who have lost their lives serving in Afghanistan since the House last sat: Corporal Simon Hornby, Lance Corporal Michael Pritchard, Lance Corporal Christopher Roney, Lance Corporal Tommy Brown, Rifleman Aidan Howell, Sapper David Watson and Private Robert Hayes.
	I would also like to pay my own tribute to David Taylor, who sadly died during the Christmas recess. I was once one of the MEPs for his area, and he had a reputation then-and always has-as an outstanding constituency MP and someone who always spoke his own mind. My heart goes out to his wife Pam and his four daughters.
	Last weekend, the Prime Minister said that he was all in favour of aspiration. Could he explain to us exactly what is aspirational about a tax system that he has created in which the poorest 20 per cent. pay more from their income in tax than the richest 20 per cent.?

Gordon Brown: The idea that the Conservative party could take a lead on climate change when they cannot even convince their own Back Benchers of what is necessary- [ Laughter. ] The Conservatives cannot make up their mind about nuclear. We are now the leading power in the world for offshore wind. We will soon be making announcements that will make it clear that massive numbers of jobs will come as a result of offshore wind. That is the right policy if we are going to have 15 per cent. renewables by 2020. I cannot understand where the Conservatives' energy policy comes from. If they take out nuclear and they take out offshore wind-and every Conservative local authority is opposing onshore wind as well-they have no policy whatsoever.

Alison Seabeck: Given the cold weather, yesterday's announcement of the boiler scrappage scheme is particularly welcome to the fuel poor in my constituency and positively welcomed by companies such as Zenex which are at the cutting edge of such technology. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that he will not only promote that excellent scheme but encourage retrofitting, which companies such as Zenex can do, and do well, to reduce our carbon footprint?

Gordon Brown: The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I think the whole House wants to be assured that, in this difficult period of weather when some areas are more hit than others, those areas that need to grit roads will have the salt necessary to do so and all the support that other local authorities that are not so affected, and central Government, can give them. I assure the hon. Lady that salt supplies have been built up as a result of what we discovered and did last year. At the same time, I can announce that there will be greater co-ordination of the distribution of salt, so that those areas that need that salt will not be denied it. I hope that I will be able to reassure her constituents that they will get the salt and the grit that are necessary.

Graham Allen: What recent representations he has received on bringing forward proposals arising from the report of the Select Committee on the Reform of the House of Commons.

Land Use (Gardens Protection etc)

Lembit �pik: The Minister accepts that it was down to a previous Administration. The practical cost to the House is an afternoon's business. He said that it was an isolated incident. Is he satisfied that it will not happen again and that we will not waste hundreds of working hours of this Chamber's business making the same mistake?

Si�n Simon: That could not have been done because the situation was caused by a failure to notify under the technical standards directive. In order for the provision to work, we had to notify it in draft under that directive. We did that three months before 15 December. The first day on which we could have had the First Reading was 15 December and we did so. Today-the second day back after the recess-is the first opportunity that we have had to deal with this on the Floor of the House.
	There are two very important points to make on why we are dealing with the Bill so urgently in one day. First, we are not changing the law in any way. The existing law has been debated using all the full procedures and has been in force for 25 years-it is only the enforceability that turns out not to have been enacted, and we need to address that.
	The second point that I want to stress is that the lack of enforceability has serious consequences. Almost any kind of serious, explicit, violent, brutal, nasty DVDs and video games can be supplied at the moment to anybody- [ Interruption. ] I am sorry; that was a long intervention.

Don Foster: I understand entirely the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, but will he bear it in mind that every day that we wait to bring the legislation back into force people will legitimately be able to sell inappropriate material to minors? Local authorities are being prosecuted because they have sought, apparently erroneously, to prosecute people for doing what we would all agree is wrong. We need to get on with it very quickly. Does he not agree?

Si�n Simon: I shall construe your silence on the matter, Mr. Speaker, as consent that I might reply to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) within the terms of this part of the debate. Prosecutions that occurred since the error was discovered in August will not have been able to proceed and will not be able to be instituted retrospectively. That is why-I think that this is what he was getting at-it is important to pass the Bill. As the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) said, not only does the situation continue with every day that goes past, but evidence from around the country shows that it is reasonable to assume that the problem will grow. The more that people are not prosecuted for supplying very inappropriate material, the more people will see an angle through which they can make what one might call an evil buck. Over the past few years there have been between 100 and 200 prosecutions a year, on average, and a great deal of other activity, which may not be prosecuted, is deterred by the enforceability of the law. I hope that I have answered the points raised by the hon. Member for Shipley.
	On the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), we will deal with the substantive issues in greater detail in the Second Reading debate on this short two-clause Bill. It does not in any way change an existing Act. It simply repeals and revives. On that basis, I commend the allocation of time motion to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.

Si�n Simon: Certainly, there will have been prosecutions that were pending or in process when the defect, to echo the right hon. Gentleman's phrase, was discovered. Those will have had to be stopped once it became apparent that the law was no longer enforceable because of its non-notification. We have heard of a handful of putative-usually putative-appeals or claims for compensation against previous convictions, although all our advice tells us that such speculative attempts to further exploit the loophole are likely to be unsuccessful.
	Although the online environment is clearly the future and is going to grow, we must not be dismissive of the traditional boxed product. Only yesterday, senior executives from Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony were all reported as saying that digitally distributed product is unlikely to overtake the boxed product for some considerable time to come.

Keith Vaz: It is very nice to hear about the contribution that the industry makes to the British economy. Does the Minister intend, in his speech, to touch on the Byron review and the Government's commitment to prevent violent video games falling into the hands of young people? Are the Government still committed to the conclusions of Byron? Will the recommendations be implemented in full? When will the Digital Economy Bill come before the House? It deals with all the other issues that the Minister cannot deal with in the context of the present Bill.

Si�n Simon: I think I have made the point. We intend to get the legislation through before the election. If the hon. Member for Bath and his hon. Friends, and right hon. and hon. Members on the Conservative Benches will help us with that, that would be the best approach for all concerned.
	I shall make progress. As I said, we should not be blinded by the online future and discount the importance of the massive volume of boxed products that will continue to be sold in the UK.
	The early 1980s saw the introduction, largely from America, of what became known as video nasties: videos that depicted acts of gross violence and violent sexual acts-acts so extreme that they caused concern about the potential effects of watching them on young people and vulnerable adults. In response, Parliament passed in 1984 the Video Recordings Act. That Act introduced a system for classifying video films and some video games according to their content, and a series of offences for supplying classified videos and video games to people under the age restriction. The 1984 Act also stopped the distribution of video nasties by ensuring that such films did not receive a classification and making it an offence to supply unclassified material.
	Some 25 years on, it is clear that the provisions of the 1984 Act have worked to remove the worst material from circulation. For example, the British Board of Film Classification, the body appointed under the 1984 Act to classify videos and DVDs, recently refused to classify the highly controversial Japanese film, Grotesque. The BBFC explained that
	the film has running themes of sexual assault, humiliation and extreme torture...and...presents the audience with...an unrelenting and escalating scenario of...sadism...(including sexual sadism) for its own sake.
	The 1984 Act was introduced to remove such films from general circulation, and I am sure that all hon. Members will congratulate the BBFC on its often unpleasant work.
	It is also clear that the system of classification that the 1984 Act introduced is well understood and well regarded by the public. Independent research conducted on behalf of the BBFC shows that 71 per cent. of adults make use of the classification ratings of films to guide their purchasing decisions at least some of the time, and that 46 per cent. do so before purchasing video games. In addition, out of a total of 3,900 film viewing occasions, those surveyed agreed 99 per cent. of the time with the BBFC's classifications. It is a good organisation, implementing a good piece of legislation that works, and it was with considerable regret, therefore, that we discovered in August 2009, during our preparations for the Digital Economy Bill, which, as hon. Members will know, is in another place for consideration, that the 1984 Act was no longer enforceable under UK law. The situation arose because of a procedural failure in 1984 to notify the European Commission of the Act's provisions in draft under the technical standards directive. I keep stressing in draft because we have to repeal the 1984 Act and revive it so that it can be notified in draft; we cannot notify an existing Act.

Edward Vaizey: I am grateful for this chance to support the Government in seeking to pass the Video Recordings Bill. As the Minister noted in his opening remarks, we are here for some very peculiar reasons. In theory, we are debating a Bill that was enacted as long ago as 1984. The then Video Recordings Bill was introduced by Graham Bright, the then Member for Luton, South, who rose to become an extremely successful Parliamentary Private Secretary to an extremely successful Prime Minister, John Major. He introduced the Bill on 11 November 1983.
	As is well known, the Bill was intended to address the problem of what were then known as video nasties. Because videos were unclassified, it was perfectly legal to sell any kind of video without any restriction whatever. As the Minister noted, in the mid-80s, video recorders-and therefore videos-were becoming all-pervasive, so there was a need to act because videos showing all kinds of unmentionable acts were freely available.
	The approach adopted by Mr. Bright in dealing with this problem was ingenious. He introduced a system of classification, and what became illegal was not the selling of an obscene video but the selling of an unclassified video, or a classified video to an inappropriate audience. The test of whether somebody was guilty under the Act was extremely clear-cut. Before the Act was passed, the problem had been that the only available sanction to stop a video nasty was the Obscene Publications Act 1959. Almost by definition, that was a subjective and difficult test to pass. In fact, there were cases of juries clearing people who were accused of selling an obscene video because the jury clearly took the view that it was not obscene. Under the Video Recordings Act 1984 it was made clear that one could not sell an unclassified video. I shall go on to explain why the Act has been so successful-largely because the British Board of Film Classification, to which I pay tribute, has been extremely successful in implementing its provisions.
	If any hon. Member has the time over the weekend-or perhaps they will have had time over the Christmas break-it is worth revisiting the debates on the Video Recordings Bill in 1983 and 1984. I am extremely grateful to Mark Taylor from the Library, who pulled out the Committee stages for me to have a look at. The Minister and I were both doing our O-levels at the time, so we may not have been that focused on the debates then taking place.
	As the Minister said in his opening remarks, there is a salutary lesson here about how quickly technology changes and moves on. It almost quaint to read those debates, with people referring to the video recording industry as a new and dynamic industry; I suspect that most video recorders are now discarded or hidden away in attics. The Minister says that it will be a considerable time before film downloads overtake box sets, but I suspect that in a few years' time, DVD machines will be going the same way and we will be downloading films directly on to our televisions. I will come back to that problem in a few minutes.
	The debate on the Bill took place at a time when the technology revolution was just beginning. It is breathtaking to see the changes that have subsequently taken place in our lifetimes.
	It is worth reviewing some of the arguments for and against the Bill at the time. For example, there was a proposal to license video stores, which was rightly rejected as bureaucratic. There was also a debate about- [Interruption.] There are noises off, Mr. Speaker, which are distracting me from my carefully drafted speech. It is interesting to note-well, it is interesting to me, if not to the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster)-that there were also calls for self-regulation of the video recording industry and suggestions that it should be given time to come up with its own system of regulation. I view that as interesting, because there are echoes of our current debate as the Digital Economy Bill goes through the other place and we are debating whether it is appropriate for the Government to regulate on internet piracy or whether there should be self-regulation by the internet service providers. As the Minister knows, we support the Government in bringing in legislation to crack down on internet piracy.
	The debate was notable for other contributions, notably a maiden speech by a new Conservative Member for Norwich, which brings to mind the excellent maiden speech recently made by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Chloe Smith). The highlight of the Second Reading debate at the time was a fine and intelligent speech by one Matthew Parris, the then Member for West Derbyshire, who showed the flair and imagination that have been such a hallmark of his subsequently glittering career in journalism. I say all this in the full expectation that I will be written up in exceptionally glowing terms in his column in  The Times this Saturday. While this House was sad to lose Mr. Parris, its sorrow was tempered by the election of his successor, who I may say has served the people of West Derbyshire, and this House, exceptionally ever since.

Edward Vaizey: I continue to assume that the right hon. Gentleman is against hardcore pornography and offensive content. For example, a video by the band Slipknot, which includes self-mutilation by teenagers, remains unclassified. Before we get into a debate on censorship, I am not saying that that content cannot be viewed by responsible adults, or that the video by Mötley Crüe, which depicts a George Bush lookalike with a prostitute, could not be viewed by responsible 18-year-olds. However, I think that all hon. Members agree that it should not be viewed by a 10-year-old, and should therefore be classified so that parents know, if their 10 or 11-year-old comes home saying, I've got the latest Mötley Crüe video exactly what it could contain. It is extraordinary that music and sports videos are exempt. We will continue to press for the removal of that exemption. However, we are where we are; the Bill has been introduced in its current form and we do not intend to stand in its way.
	I end with a wider point about what the Bill omits, and ask whether we are closing the stable door after the horse has bolted and whether, by considering a Bill that applies to a venerable Act-25 years old-we are missing the point. I ask that because of the advent of the internet and convergence. Although the Under-Secretary said in his opening remarks that experts who retail such products believe that it will be some considerable time before the download of film overtakes the purchase and rental of DVDs, I counsel that that considerable time could be considerably shortened when one considers, for example, YouTube, which grew from nothing to being a global company in 18 months.
	To pick up on the comments of the right hon. Member for Leicester, East about the Byron report, which focuses on keeping children safe in a digital world, I am genuinely interested in the Under-Secretary's thoughts about how and whether content should be regulated online. As he knows, an increasing number of video distributors submit their films for classification to the BBC for an online rating, but obviously more unscrupulous dealers do not do that. The legislation does nothing to ensure that there are any sanctions against people who distribute videos online.
	The opportunity to respond to a Second Reading debate for the first time from the Front Bench has been thoroughly enjoyable. It has been a rollercoaster ride. There were a couple of clashes with Mr. Speaker, who took the punchlines of my best jokes, but I hope that I have covered the ground comprehensively and shown the reasons for the Opposition's support for the Government's fast-tracking the Bill today.

Keith Vaz: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey). I congratulate him on his maiden Second Reading speech from the Front Bench. It was fascinating and I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you were not present for the whole contribution. I feel-and I am sure the House feels-that we know so much more about the hon. Gentleman, especially his encyclopaedic knowledge of all the films and videos that have been produced in the past 25 years.
	It must be a Minister's worst nightmare to arrive at his desk in Whitehall to be told by civil servants that an important Act is effectively illegal. An Act is an Act, as the Minister has said, but the news in respect of this Act was that it had not passed through the necessary European legislation hoops and that therefore the prosecutions under it of the past 26 years were, in effect, invalid. I do not know whether the Minister who is present was the Minister who was told that news, but if so, I would love to have been in his office as he received the advice. I must commend him, however, as I think he has dealt with this situation in an extremely calm and cool manner throughout, from how he responded to the first announcements just before Christmas to the way in which he has presented the Bill to the House. It is right for the Government to use this special method to try to get the legislation through the House, because the worst possible thing to do on discovering that an Act of Parliament is not, in fact, enforceable would be to allow that Act to remain on the statute book and individuals and companies to be prosecuted, and then to try to work out at a later stage exactly what to do about that very unfortunate circumstance.
	The Minister has given us an assurance that the Government have brought the matter before the House as best they could in the circumstances. We will therefore deal with all the Bill's stages this afternoon, and, judging by the number of Members attending this debate, we should deal with them speedily. By doing so, we might provide more time for discussion of the Digital Economy Bill, as the hon. Member for Wantage said.
	In common with every other Member who has spoken thus far, I of course agree that we need to correct the error made 26 years ago, and I commend the Minister on not seeking to make party political points about why it occurred, as this could have happened to any Minister. We do not expect Ministers to have encyclopaedic knowledge of how the European Union works. Ministers operate in accordance with the advice given to them, and clearly over the past 26 years advice was given to Ministers suggesting that the legislation was fully in keeping with European law and was therefore enforceable.
	I hope that when the Minister sums up he will tell us in greater detail precisely what will happen to those who have been prosecuted; he alluded to that during the discussion of the allocation of time motion. The question of compensation has been mentioned, and when this was announced I received a telephone call from the home affairs editor of  The Times telling me what had happened. There is genuine concern among those who have been prosecuted over the past 26 years as to whether their convictions were valid, whether the sums paid in fines will have to be repaid to them and whether they might be re-prosecuted as a result of the new legislation. I am sure that it will not be retrospective legislation. We cannot say that everybody who has been prosecuted under the 1984 Act will have to be re-prosecuted-we do not know. It is extremely important that there is clarity on such issues if the House is to give the Government the benefit of the doubt and allow them to pass the Bill in the space of one day-or a few hours, in fact.
	Let us be clear about what we wish to know. Will those who have been prosecuted be entitled to compensation, and if so, how much will they get? Will they be re-prosecuted? Do their convictions still stand, or are they expunged? What is the precise legal nature of this situation? I am sure that the Minister will have sought the advice of the Attorney-General and that she will have been very clear about where the Government stand in respect of an Act of Parliament that is found to be unenforceable. When the Minister sums up, I hope that he will tell us the answers to those questions.
	My second point is about the general debate concerning video games. I am keen not to stray beyond the measures of the Video Recordings Act 1984, but there were some very interesting comments from the Front Benches about their commitment to ensuring that the thriving and innovative video games industry in the United Kingdom, and particularly in London, survives. I am not against what is being proposed, and I have never been in favour of censorship; I have always been very clear that those who are aged 18-plus should be able to buy and watch whatever video games they want. Those who are not sufficiently old should not be able to do so, however, and those retailers who are prosecuted under this Act must be dealt with very severely indeed.
	I say that because I disagree with the hon. Member for Wantage, in that I do not believe that watching a film is the same as participating in a video game. I know that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have very young grandchildren, and I have children aged 14 and 12. A huge amount of research has been done on the issue, and it has been found that a half of all eight to 11-year-olds use the internet without adult supervision. I do not know how many Members present have children or grandchildren aged between eight and 11, but it is a real worry that a half of those in that age group are not supervised by adults when using the internet.
	Some parents take the home computer out of their children's rooms and put it in a room where everyone has access to it so that they can watch over what their children are doing online. Parents have different ways of dealing with that issue, but the fact is that watching a violent film is different from participating in a video game. If a young person gets hold of Modern Warfare 2, for example, they will be asked to participate in a terrorist attack; they will be asked to shoot at civilians in Moscow airport as part of the game. That is why the Russian Government have banned Modern Warfare 2; they felt that in an age when we are trying to educate our children about the need to understand the dangers of extreme violence, we should not place in their hands, under the guise of entertainment, games that allow them to act in a violent way.
	I am grateful to the Minister for what he said about the Digital Economy Bill coming before this House soon, and it is always the hope of Ministers that such Bills will come to the House from the other place quickly, but I have counted that we have just 35 working days from now until 31 March. Nobody knows when the next general election will be held, of course, but there are only 35 complete working days in which legislation can be addressed in this House.

Don Foster: It is a great honour and privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who serves with such distinction as the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee and has a clear, personal interest in one of the key issues being debated today-namely, video games. I was particularly delighted that he went out of his way to praise the video games industry. He is absolutely right in doing so: it is a vital part of this country's creative economy, which many people believe could be, with the relevant support, as important to the country's economy as the financial services industries have been. Many people have believed him to be interested only in condemning individual video games-he has gone on several crusades in that respect-so it was good to hear him praising the industry, as well as chastising it for some of the projects it has produced.
	I was also pleased that the right hon. Gentleman picked up on a point that I made in an intervention on the Minister. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I have done the calculations on the Digital Economy Bill, which makes amendments to the Video Recordings Act 1984, and given the recent announcement that the time allocation in another place will be longer than originally anticipated, it seems highly unlikely that we will be able to get through all the stages of that Bill in this place before the likely date of the general election. Given that there is cross-party support for much of Tanya Byron's excellent report, I hope that the Minister can find ways to ensure that areas on which there is such agreement can be brought forward and put on to the statute book before the election.
	I was also pleased to hear the right hon. Gentleman pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey), to whom I shall turn in a second, about the successful prosecutions of those who have been selling inappropriate videos to under-age people-to children. It is right and proper that we praise, for example, the many excellent trading standards officers in local authorities around the country who have brought those prosecutions so successfully-if only other cases of under-age sales, such as of alcohol, were prosecuted with such vigour! However, I am delighted that that is happening in this case.
	I am always delighted to be involved in debates in which the hon. Gentleman has participated. I confess that it came as a complete surprise to hear that this was his maiden Second Reading speech as a shadow Minister. He seems to have been in his place as a shadow Minister for so long; it demonstrates how scarce is the legislation on matters within the portfolio of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Were we to have been allowed, many of us would have liked to see legislation such as the Heritage Protection Bill, which would have given him an earlier outing on his party's Front Bench.
	The hon. Gentleman occupied the crease for 36 minutes, during which he did a great deal, rightly, to praise the British Board of Film Classification for its work. However, he failed to praise it also for its work in speech writing-I recognised quite a large chunk of his speech from the excellent briefing notes that the organisation provided to all hon. Members likely to be taking part in the debate. However, he raised some important points, and I do not wish to repeat many of them, given that he occupied the crease for so long. We know why we are here and we know what the problem is.
	As the right hon. Gentleman said, the Minister was generous in not seeking to make party political advantage on where the error occurred, whether in 1984, in 1993 when the first revisions took place, or in 1994 when the second revisions took place. One might have expected the concern now discovered-about the provisions not having been reported to the European Union-to have been discovered at that time. Nevertheless, let us praise the current civil servants in the Minister's Department for finding the problem and helping the Minister and his predecessor to find a way to deal with it swiftly.
	Swiftness is the essence of why we are here today. It is vital that we get back on to the statute book, as quickly as possible, legislation that provides protection against the sale of inappropriate material to children and counters the ability of people to sell pirate DVDs and so on. We have all made it clear that we are keen to support the Minister in his desire to fast-track the legislation back on to the statute book and then to make, if there is sufficient time-I am increasingly concerned about that-subsequent amendments to it in light of, for instance, the introduction of the PEGI system for video games. There is support for that on both sides of the House.
	Reference has been made to the case for amending the Video Recordings Act itself, something that we could have done today. It might have delayed proceedings, but it could have been an option. The hon. Member for Wantage made a point about some of his party's proposals for changes to the legislation. I would like an assurance that the issues raised will be dealt with in the Digital Economy Bill, so that there will not be a need to amend the Bill that is before us.
	I share the concern expressed by the current shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt), about DVDs and videos relating to sport, religion and music that do not carry ratings but which often contain material that many of us would think inappropriate, in particular for sale to young people. Such videos include self-mutilation, erotic dancing, sex toys, drug use and so on.
	The Minister's officials have made clear a point that was not picked up by the hon. Member for Wantage. They have said:
	Music, sports or religious videos lose their exemption from classification if they depict sexual activity, mutilation, gross violence or other practices likely to cause offence,
	and that in those circumstances,
	it is for the appropriate enforcement authorities to take action.
	The implication is that there is no need for an amendment, because other bits of legislation could be used to prosecute people distributing such material. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify that issue, because it is one that those in probably all parts of the House want to be resolved. My concern is to find out the means by which it is going to be resolved, or whether the Minister believes, as his officials appear to be saying, that there is no problem and that action can be taken under existing legislation.
	I will not dwell on my second point for any length of time because it has already been raised by the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who is no longer in his place, despite the fact that the race meeting to which he was hoping to go today has been cancelled because of bad weather. The hon. Gentleman rightly raised the issue of the degree of complacency-I choose my words carefully-that the Minister appears to have about people who have already been prosecuted under the Video Recordings Act 1984, which we now understand was not correctly enforced.
	The Minister seemed to imply that the reason he had been advised that there would be no redress was that people would be too late to make an appeal. However, as the right hon. Gentleman made clear-I think that the hon. Member for Wantage made a similar point-if the legislation was never enforced correctly, we are not talking about an appeal; rather, I suspect that we are talking about a very different legal process. Others have asked for them, and I, too, would be grateful if the Minister could give us clearer assurances about why he and his officials are correct in this matter.

John Whittingdale: It is a pleasure to follow all four previous speakers in what has been a remarkably harmonious debate. I do not intend to change that. This is an important measure, and I welcome the fact that the Government have moved so swiftly to close the loophole that has been identified. I will not dwell on how it came about, but I merely observe that the Government are very fond of blaming almost every ill in society on the actions of the previous Government, and this is one of the very few examples where there may be some merit in that claim.
	I hope that the Minister will address the questions raised by the previous speakers about the consequences of the loophole, because I share their concern about the status of those who have been convicted over the course of the past 25 years and the possibility of their bringing action for what now appear to have been unlawful convictions. I hope that he will spend a little more time on that subject when he responds.
	I wish to make a few observations about the Video Recordings Act 1984. I always approach any such legislation with some suspicion, as I am fundamentally opposed to censorship. I believe that in a free society it is up to adults to choose what they wish to see, but there are two important qualifications to that. The first is that there will always be some material that is so unacceptable in its violent or explicitly sexual content that it is deemed to be damaging to people to view it. I accept that, and some examples have been given in the debate.
	I shall return to that matter, but perhaps more important is the fact that while adults are free to choose, we have always accepted that children require protection. I join right hon. and hon. Members in paying tribute to the work of the BBFC. It is in the area of age classification that some of the most difficult decisions have to be taken. The film that required perhaps more cuts than any other, some time ago now, was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, because the distributor was keen that it should be given a certificate that meant children were able to see it. The BBFC felt that it contained inappropriate material, and there was lengthy negotiation. A lot of the controversy about films such as The Dark Knight and Casino Royale is about whether they should appropriately be a 12 or a 15.
	The virtue of the 1984 Act was that it extended that protection, which already existed in cinemas, to viewing in the home. The Minister gave the statistics on the extent to which viewing in the home has taken off in the past 20 years. When the Act was originally introduced back in 1984, it was accompanied by a degree of what one can only call hysteria about video nasties, and it is worth reflecting on what has happened to some of the most notorious examples of films that were widely cited at that time.
	The then Minister, Mr. David Mellor, named three films in the course of the debate. The first was The Driller Killer, which was banned after the passage of the 1984 Act but then released uncut in 2002, and last night I checked and found that it is available on Amazon for £3.98. The second was Zombie Flesh Eaters. That, too, was banned under the Act but then released uncut in 2005 and can now be found on Amazon at £5.98. The third was I Spit On Your Grave, which was also on the list of prosecutable movies until 2001 but was then released, although with substantial cuts made by the BBFC, and is now widely available. Perhaps the most remarkable example is a film that was on the Director of Public Prosecution's list of films that were banned, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, which at the time was regarded as wholly unacceptable but, indicating how tastes change, two years ago was given away free with copies of  The Sun as a promotional move.
	There is no question but that tastes change and that we have become more liberal, which I welcome. However, as I said, there will always be films that go beyond what is generally regarded as acceptable. The Minister mentioned one particular film, Grotesque. Two films were banned by the BBFC in 2008. The first was Murder-Set-Pieces, described as having scenes in which
	a psychopathic sexual serial killer...is seen raping, torturing and murdering his victims.
	The second has the unlikely title of The Texas Vibrator Massacre-I leave its contents to the imagination of hon. Members. I shall return to those two films in a moment.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey) made the important point that there are loopholes in the existing legislation, which existed for good reasons at the time. It was not regarded as possible that a video concerning music or sport could be unacceptable. That loophole has undoubtedly been exploited. I hosted a dinner that the BBFC gave in the House just before Christmas, at which it showed us examples of some of the material that is now available in music videos and sports games that does not require certification because of the loophole in the 1984 Act. I understand why the Government did not feel able to address that matter in the Bill, but I share the wish that has been expressed that the loophole should be closed, and I hope that it will be in the Digital Economy Bill.
	The second main point that I wish to make is that at the time of the passage of the 1984 Act, the world was completely different. Mr. Graham Bright, the Member who moved Second Reading, said that he defined a video recording as
	a video tape or video disc. It is thus a physical product.-[ Official Report, 11 November 1983; Vol. 48, c. 525.]
	Of course, it is now not necessarily a physical product. More and more video is being made available through online distribution, which at the time perhaps could not even have been conceived. We are seeking to address that through moves such as those by the BBFC to impose a voluntary system of regulation, but the films that we are concerned about are now very widely available. I return to the two that I mentioned, Murder-Set-Pieces and The Texas Vibrator Massacre. I checked last night and found that both those films are widely available through file sharing sites. An internet search for either with the words download or bit torrent will bring up any number of sites from which one can obtain them. Equally, they are available through cyberlockers. Both are on Megaupload and RapidShare and can be accessed without any attempt to verify the age of the person downloading them. There is serious concern about how we can continue to protect young people when it is now so easy to obtain such films.
	We will debate the matter at greater length when we come to the measures against piracy through illegal file sharing that the Government are proposing to take in the Digital Economy Bill. It is worth remembering that it is not just protection of copyright that is at stake when we consider file sharing. There is equally the concern that it is being used to circumvent the protections that the House has put in place. In the most extreme cases, as I am sure the Minister will be aware, child pornography is being widely distributed through illegal file sharing. That is another reason why I share with other hon. Members the view that it is important that we get the Digital Economy Bill on to the statute book.
	Having said that, I agree with the Minister that the majority of distribution of video content will still be through physical product for the foreseeable future, so it is certainly important that the Bill should be passed today and that we should reinstate the protections that we thought were already in place. However, there is a danger that we will be seen to be bolting the front door when the back door is wide open, and we will have to consider that in future.
	That leads me to the more general conclusion that I suspect that there is nothing that this House can do to legislate to prevent the distribution of material online from sites that may be located on the other side of the world. When we consider what it is appropriate for people to view, we must remember that that is a matter for adults to decide. The most effective means that we can have to protect children is for parents to exercise responsibility, watch carefully what their children are doing and ensure that they are not obtaining access to content that could be damaging to them. I support the Bill, but I fear that it is beginning to look increasingly old-fashioned and outmoded given the extraordinary pace of development throughout the video sector.

Si�n Simon: With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall reply to the debate-and what a pleasure it has been. What a bijou gathering of wisdom and experience this is. Two Select Committee Chairmen, the venerable battler from Bath and my old friend from Wantage have all, in their different ways, made valuable, insightful and often entertaining contributions. Would that it were always thus.
	We have already congratulated the British Board of Film Classification on the job that it does, by which we meant the job of classifying films, but I think I ought also to congratulate it on the job that it does in lobbying Members of Parliament and providing briefing for these debates. Rarely can the entire participating body in a debate have been so thoroughly and extensively briefed by a single organisation. I visited the BBFC's offices fairly recently and heard its arguments about one or two aspects that we may not see in exactly the same way, but I think we are in accord on most of the issues that Members, in their different ways, have discussed today: that is, the central issues. Let me deal with a few of them, hopefully not leaving out too much but also not using up too much time.
	The hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey) could not quite resist making the anti-European point that the 1984 Act was clearly a single market liberalisation measure leading up to the Single European Act of 1985-that crowning, triumphant, extraordinary piece of Thatcherite European legislation that is the rock on which the European single market is founded, and the basis on which it continues to exist and derive so much prosperity for our countries and our Union. He mentioned several times-and other Members mentioned it as well-that the Cabinet Office had been looking into the issues. I cannot give him any more detail of who in the Cabinet Office has been doing what, but I can tell him that the need to ensure that the omission was an isolated incident and will never happen again is being taken very seriously.
	I agree with the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), who praised the zeal and efficiency of the DCMS officials who finally discovered the omission and set us on the road to where we have arrived today. If we are not keen-as I am not-to get into the business of allocating blame for causing the problem in the first place, I am sure we can all unite in wholehearted praise for the people who identified it and are helping us to solve it.
	The issue of appeals and past convictions is a difficult one. It is not as simple as some Members seem to think. None of the questions involved have been tested in court. To date, the courts have dealt with no attempts to set aside past prosecutions. Successful prosecutions issued before the failure to refer the 1984 Act to the Commission were dealt with through due process, and as such they still stand. The courts are very reluctant to set aside convictions made years ago when the offence was proved and the defendant found guilty under an Act of Parliament passed by the House, only the enforceability of which has been invalidated by a technicality. The Act remains an Act of Parliament. It remains in force. Only the ability of the authorities to enforce is affected by the failure to notify under the technical standards directive.
	We think that claims for compensation are very unlikely to succeed. There is no automatic right to compensation, and any legal right to it in these circumstances would be unprecedented. I understand the prism through which Members have viewed the issue. The hon. Member for Wantage claimed that I had been given bad advice. He described the move from the current boxed physical product world to the online world, and said that he was minded to give me better advice on that than I was currently receiving.

Si�n Simon: If the House will permit me, I will omit, in these circumstances, the usual courtesies attached to the beginning of a Committee stage, and move straight on to speak to the clause, which is at the heart of the Bill.
	The purpose of the clause, as stated in subsection (1)(a), is to repeal all the provisions of the Video Recordings Act 1984, which should have been notified to the European Commission in 1984. Subsection (1)(b) then immediately revives all those provisions, which have now been notified to the European Commission. As a result, it makes them enforceable again in law. The Bill and the 1984 Act were formally notified to the Commission in accordance with the technical standards and regulations directive, and it necessary for the 1984 Act to be repealed and revived in this way to ensure that all its provisions are fully enforceable again. The failure to notify the 1984 Act was a procedural error under the terms of the directive. The purpose of the Bill is to correct the procedural irregularities arising from that omission and to restore the important public protections that the 1984 Act contains and that the public have come to expect regarding the sale of videos and DVDs.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Si�n Simon: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that; I did fail to answer that question, although not intentionally. Considerable advice and support are being given to local authorities. The Crown Prosecution Service has produced comprehensive guidance on all the relevant issues for local and trading standards administrations, and we are confident that that guidance will equip them to deal with the situation appropriately.
	This Third Reading is a conclusion to the Bill. I need only repeat my gratitude to Members on both sides of the House, and particularly to the Opposition parties, which have supported us wholeheartedly as we have used this procedure to get the measure through the House very quickly. We have done that to restore the safeguards for people of all ages, but young people in particular, so that they are not harmed and outraged by the unscrupulous sale of offensive and inappropriate material.
	In conclusion, as the Bill moves to the other place, I add a plea to Members there: debate on this Bill is not the appropriate time for discussion of the Digital Economy Bill, or even the detailed provisions of the Video Recordings Act 1984. This is an emergency, fast-track measure that, by its nature, could not be fast-tracked if it were amended.  [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) looks quizzical. In case he was quizzicaling at me, I should say that if the Bill were amended it would have to be renotified in draft again, and that would take another three months.
	We need to do this quickly. We are grateful for the support that we have had across the House in getting it done quickly. I commend the Bill to the other place in that same spirit of urgency and seriousness.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Bill  accordingly  read the Third time and passed.

Peter Bone: Indeed; I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention.
	Let me address this issue in a little depth. It has not been sprung on the Government. They proposed this change in the Standing Orders-the motion before us-on 23 November.
	A number of hon. Members, including me, have outlined the problem that the motion causes. On 26 November, I raised the matter in business questions, pointing out that on that very day the ballot for private Members' Bills was taking place, although nobody knew what dates had been allocated, and that the number of days allocated was set to decrease from 13 to eight. I argued that, in effect, the number had decreased to six because some of the dates that the Government had chosen were so late that clearly the general election would be upon us before they were reached.
	On 10 December, the shadow Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who is in his place, brought up the issue in business questions when he asked why we were not having a debate on it. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, who speaks for the Liberals on business of the House matters and who is also in his place, has also raised this question. He has also raised the issue of the Wright Committee report, which has a number of things to say about the allocation of time for private Members' Bills. I might touch on that issue later, if I have time to do so. At the same business questions, my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) brought that matter to the House's attention. I must pass on his apologies for not being here today. He would like to be participating in this debate, but the Government have clearly organised the business so that this debate is occurring at the exact time when he is leading a debate on immigration in Westminster Hall. I hope that he will have an opportunity to participate in this debate later.
	I have also raised a couple of points of order on this issue; on 16 December, I pointed out that with the exception of that in respect of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, the Second Reading dates that were announced were not confirmed. I asked how Members were to know that they would be able to debate their private Members' business on the given day. I also took the opportunity-there seemed to be no other way of bringing this to the House's attention in any form of debate-to raise the matter on the Adjournment debate on 16 December. I was hoping that that would provide the Deputy Leader of the House with the chance to argue the Government's case on this matter, but again they did not take the opportunity to make a defence of the reason for their cutting down the voice of Back Benchers. Today, when they had an opportunity to comment on it at the beginning of this debate all we heard was I beg to move. The situation is ludicrous. There is no defence for it and the Government should be ashamed. They should withdraw their motion, but I doubt whether they will do so.
	Some people must be wondering whether I have some hidden motive, whether I am secretly hoping to get a Bill through or whether I am down the list on the ballot-I am not in the top 20. They might be wondering whether this is a political thing and whether the Tory party wants to get something through. That is hardly the case because only three of the first 12 private Members who came up in the ballot are Conservatives. There is nothing political about this; this is about Parliament having the opportunity to discuss private Members' Bills.
	I am attracted to one or two Bills. I am attracted to the anti-slavery Bill put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) and to his work on tackling human trafficking, but that is not the issue here; the issue here is the time available. I am also attracted to a couple of the proposals relating to the Lisbon treaty.
	That leads on nicely to why we must have ample time for debate. There are two reasons to introduce a private Member's Bill. The first is that a Member wishes to change the law. There have been numerous cases where worthy causes have been taken up and put on the statute book, but that can be done only when time is available. Time needs to be available for Second Reading, for the Committee stage and for Third Reading. I am afraid that if this motion is passed today, nobody will get any of their Bills on to the statute book.

Peter Bone: I do not wish to criticise people who were in Parliament when I was not if I have no idea about what the situation was at the time. However, as I have said, a lot more private Bills got through under the previous Conservative Government; the relevant figure is 49. In 1996-97-the period during which the Deputy Leader of the House claims the time available was shortened-14 balloted private Members' Bills got on to the statute book. Whatever arrangements were in place then, there was plenty of time for private Members to get their business through and for Bills to obtain Royal Assent. That just will not happen under the current arrangement. I have outlined the figures, which show that the situation has been hopeless under this Government-I believe that two private Members' Bills got through last year.

Barbara Keeley: I think that the hon. Gentleman is challenging the principle of having some non-sitting Fridays. On this side of the House, we believe that Members need time to discharge their duties in their constituencies as well as in this House. The system of non-sitting Fridays was introduced, I understand, on the recommendation of the former Conservative Chief Whip, the noble Lord Jopling, and has been widely welcomed since its introduction by Members in all parties as they have that time to discharge duties in their constituencies. Given the difficulties that have gripped our constituencies-certainly mine-over the last couple of days due to the extreme weather, it is pretty important that Members should have the chance to get back there.

Peter Bone: Fridays are important for constituency work, but I do constituency work every day of the week. We are talking about 13 Fridays a Session, and, basically, only the mornings of those days. I do not think that the hon. Lady's argument washes. She failed to say that on a Friday it is only Members who are interested in a particular Bill who turn up, and not the whole House. If the hon. Lady can guarantee that the whole House will turn up on the eight days that she has suggested, because that would give them other Fridays off, I might be inclined to think again about the motion. Of course, that is not at all what the motion is about. The motion is about restricting the voice of this House.
	The hon. Lady's helpful intervention leads me to Rebuilding the House, the first report of the 2008-09 Session by the Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons. It talks about the timing of private Members' Bills and states:
	The House should be responsible for ensuring that merely procedural devices cannot obstruct Private Members' Bills, and that they are brought to a decision.
	The Government are using the procedural device of suspending Standing Orders to obstruct private Members' Bills.
	The shadow Leader of the House also argued that there is a problem with Fridays. Rebuilding the House suggests in paragraph 193 that Wednesday evenings could be used for private Members' Bills. I have not sought to go that far, but it would overcome entirely the hon. Lady's objection that too many Fridays will be used up. If I could have a guarantee from the shadow Leader of the House before the end of the debate that instead of using the Fridays that are free, they will put the extra five days on Wednesdays, I would more than happily withdraw my amendment and accept the shadow Leader of the House's words-

Peter Bone: I apologise. Because of her ability, I just assumed that she was Leader. As Deputy Leader of the House, she might want to take some advice before responding. I hope that at some stage we will hear the Government's view on the motion. To say that they have been silent is not quite correct, but I beg to move is hardly a good enough argument for a motion that has been on the Order Paper since 23 November and has been objected to by Members of the House on every single evening since.
	I have not gone as far as the Committee, but have accepted the current situation, because for some reason the Committee's report has not been debated by the House.
	Let me move on to my amendment. It is straightforward and restores the 13 days. It says that
	Private Members' Bills shall have precedence over Government business on 8, 15, 22 and 29 January; 5 and 26 February-
	that suggests that I have not called for debate on every single Friday, as the hon. Lady suggested. In fact, I was very careful not to intervene in the spring recess. I also selected
	5, 12, 19 and 26 March
	and I have not suggested another private Members' Bills day until 23 April. Although I do not know the dates for the Easter recess, I know when Easter is so I have allowed for those Fridays, too. I think the hon. Lady was being slightly harsh on me in suggesting that I had picked on every Friday.
	I have not heard the argument but perhaps it will be made at some stage that there is not enough time for Bills to be printed and prepared for a debate on 8 January-this Friday. However, we already know that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome could get his Bill then and he could probably have a whole sitting on it, so it is possible. The reason that the Bills have not been printed is that the Government failed under Standing Order No. 14 to provide the dates that they said they would provide and which they are required to do by Standing Orders.
	I take what might be an old-fashioned view that Standing Orders exist to protect Parliament-I am sure that is correct-and particularly to protect Back-Bench Members of Parliament and Opposition Members of Parliament against the power of the Executive. Year after year we have seen the Government-the Executive-take more and more power, no matter which party has been in control. This year is a turning point. Parliament has been brought into disrepute by what happened last year. People are demanding that Parliament asserts itself and becomes more independent of the Executive. It is amazing that in a year when people are saying that, the Government propose to cut the time for Back-Bench debate.
	The Government would lose nothing by providing those extra Fridays. All it would mean is that a Minister would have to turn up on a Friday five more times than is suggested by the Government. Although this is a small piece of the overall reform of Parliament, it is exceptionally important that the Government realise that cutting off difficult debate is not in their interest. They have made that mistake time and again since I have been in Parliament. By reducing the amount of time allowed through programme motions, debate has not carried on and parts of Bills have not even been scrutinised. That is a failure of the Government. The more an item is debated, the more the Government can put their point of view.

Barbara Keeley: I come back to the question that I have already put to the hon. Gentleman. Are members of his Front-Bench team in agreement with the points that he is making? He keeps speaking about cutting off debate and denying Back-Bench Members the chance for debate, but we have allocated private Member's Bill days pro rata in a short Session, exactly as was done in 1996-97 and 1991-92, under a Conservative Administration. If he chooses to condemn an Administration for that, I invite him to condemn earlier ones too, and to tell the House whether members of his Front-Bench team agree with what he is doing today.

David Wilshire: I apologise to my hon. Friend and to the House for having been at a Transport Committee sitting, but I have watched the annunciator screen with some admiration, thinking of the pearls of wisdom that my hon. Friend will have been delivering while I have not been in the Chamber. He rightly said that Standing Orders say that there shall be thirteen sitting Fridays-not that if the Session is longer, there should be more than 13. They say exactly 13. I have been a Member for 20-plus years and have, therefore, sat through long Sessions and short Sessions. On every occasion that I have ever known a Session to go beyond its length of time, there never has been more than 13 such sittings. Not only do the Standing Orders not say that there must be more, there have not been any more. Is my hon. Friend aware of any occasion when there has been more than 13? That is the most powerful part of the argument: if it has to be 13, it has to be 13.

Peter Bone: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention, and that is exactly the point. Standing Orders are absolutely clear: 13 Fridays are set aside for private Members' business in each Session. They do not talk about reducing the number in a short Session or extending the number in a long Session. We cannot extend the number of Fridays for private Members' business unless we suspend Standing Orders, and I return to my original argument that Standing Orders exist to protect this Parliament and this House against the power of the Executive. I have yet to hear from the Deputy Leader of the House why the surplus Fridays that we are not using before a general election can be held cannot be used. She has been keen to pop up and down to intervene, but she has never answered that question.
	I have said that our having had to wait until today to debate this motion is ridiculous, and that private Members have presented their Bills without knowing the date of their Second Reading. The elephant in the House, however, is that we know that there will be a general election, although not when that general election will be called.
	If Standing Orders say that 13 Fridays should be set aside, it is surely logical, in a year when there will be a general election, to take the first Friday available and run things on from there. That would give more Members the chance of a Second Reading at which their Bills might be debated, and it would give their Bills more chance of going into and coming out of Committee. The hon. Lady keeps referring to previous Executives, saying, They cut the number of sittings down, but if we look at the statistics we find that many more Bills got through: 49 in the final Parliament of the previous Conservative Government, against eight under this control-freak Executive.
	I do not want to take up a lot of time on what I believe to be an exceptionally important matter, because I know about the adverse weather conditions.

Peter Bone: I do not know whether this will encourage my right hon. Friend to vote for my amendment, but I would be here on each of those Fridays.
	I thought that my right hon. Friend might be about to mention the suggestion in the Rebuilding the House report that we should have sittings to discuss private Members' Bills on Wednesdays. I have already said that I would not press my amendment to a vote if the Deputy Leader of the House, who has now had time to consider that offer, were to suggest that we should keep the Fridays listed in the Government motion and add five Wednesdays, which would bring more people to the debates. I would be more than happy not to press my amendment to a vote in those circumstances, and I wonder whether she would like to intervene to give me her view on that. So far, the Government have only said, I beg to move.

Christopher Chope: Again, I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate. Has my hon. Friend received any indication from the Government on whether, in the most unlikely event of their being re-elected in the general election, they would minded to allow more than 13 Fridays for private Members' Bills in what would be the long first Session of that new Parliament?

Peter Bone: I want to be very clear that my amendment does not seek to change the precedent of discussing private Members' Bills on Fridays. I have not gone down that route on purpose, because it would involve a change to Standing Orders. My amendment simply seeks to make the House do what it says that it should do, which is to have 13 sittings for private Members' Bills. I have a problem, however, in that we have not heard the Government's arguments at all. The only words we have heard from them are, I beg to move, and a few interventions. I am therefore trying to anticipate what they might have said in putting forward an alternative argument.

Andrew Pelling: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman and to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for not being in the Chamber earlier in the debate. Constituency work kept me away, having sat here throughout yesterday.
	In his commentaries on the amendment, has the hon. Gentleman been able to point out the comparison between this House and the US Congress? Congressmen make a very great merit with their constituents of legislation that they have personally got on to the statute book. Does not that emphasise the importance of the amendment, and of maximising the number of days available in the remainder of the time of this Parliament?

Peter Bone: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making his point and that is on the record, but I do not want to be drawn into making comparisons with the US Senate. Clearly, the US Executive are outside Congress and the Executive here are in the House.
	It is very good news that the Government Chief Whip has turned up to listen to and encourage debate in the House on more time for parliamentary business. I am really pleased to see him here and I hope he has an opportunity to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, a little later.
	Other hon. Members may wish to speak in the debate, and I shall take this opportunity to conclude my remarks. By supporting my amendment, the House would not demure from anything in the Government motion and it would not affect any Member who has already selected a day.

Barbara Keeley: The motion in the name of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House provides for private Members' Bills to be considered on eight Fridays, rather than the 13 provided for in Standing Order No. 14(4), and appoints the days.
	As I indicated earlier, we are for the first time since 1997 in the fifth Session of a Parliament. That is key in the context of the motion. We know that the current Session must end no later than 10 May this year. That means that there could be a maximum of only 82 sitting days, including the eight Fridays proposed in the motion, which compares with an average of 158 sitting days per Session since 2001. The motion therefore reduces the number of sitting Fridays pro rata to match the length of the Session. As I have indicated a number of times in interventions, in 1991-92 and 1996-97, motions with a similar effect were proposed by the then Conservative Administrations and agreed by the House.
	The remaining provisions of the motion are consequential on the change in the number of days. They bring forward from the eighth to the fifth Friday the earliest date on which a Bill may be referred to a Second Reading Committee, and the date on which Bills start to take precedence according to how much progress they have made rather than simply according to the order in which they were introduced.
	The motion is not about restricting Members in any way. The Leader of the House tables a motion, which announces dates pro rata to the length of the Session. The opposition of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) has prevented setting the dates so far. We are considering a routine House motion, which is necessary to adapt the House's private Member's Bill procedures to the shorter fifth Session.
	The motion will allow the private Member's Bill process to continue in an orderly and predictable manner for hon. Members who have been fortunate enough in the ballot to make progress with their measures. I commend it to the House.

George Young: I am glad that the Government have finally allowed us to debate the matter-the motion and the amendment have been on the Order Paper since 23 November. I have raised the failure to resolve the matter in business questions, as have other hon. Members. Until today, there has been no certainty about the dates for discussing private Members' Bills. Again, the Government seemed to expect that they could assume Members' support when they timetabled House business. When opposition was expressed in the form of an amendment, which my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) tabled, the Government assumed that they could get the motion through on the nod at the end of the day's business rather than allowing proper discussion, which we are now having. That is not right and it has been raised in the report, which my hon. Friend mentioned, about allowing the House more control over its business. Under the Wright scenario, I suspect that we would not have had the problems that my hon. Friend described.
	However, that is a debate for another day, together with whether we move private Members' Bills from Fridays to Wednesdays. I commend my hon. Friend's defence of private Members' Bills, which was made with no self-interest because I am afraid that he was not successful in the ballot. It is important that the House jealously protects private Members' time. I say that as someone who was successful in the ballot in 1997, when my main problem was not time, but Eric Forth. Getting the Bill round him was the major task, and, indeed, we did that.
	Of course, I sympathise with my hon. Friend's desire to maximise the number of days for private Members' Bills. However, the Government's proposal to act pro rata and move to a lower number to reflect the shorter Session is right. As the Deputy Leader of the House said, it is in line with previous practice.
	My hon. Friend made several compelling points, some more compelling than others. However, one of his more compelling points was that in a shorter Session, the number of days decreases, but in a longer Session, the number does not increase. The House may want to revert to that in the context of the Wright debate and allocating the future business of the House.

George Young: The short answer is no and the longer answer is probably also no because the House has yet to debate the Wright report, whether we should have a business committee and how time should be allocated in future. I approach that with an open mind. I served on the Wright Committee and I have much sympathy with it, but I cannot today commit any future Administration to an increase in the pro rata number from 13 to 18 or a higher number, which my hon. Friend ingeniously tries to tempt me to do.
	On this occasion, I propose to support the Government's motion.

David Heath: The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) said that the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) had no personal interest in the matter. However, I have enormous personal interest, having been successful in the ballot, albeit in a lowly position this year-not that one's position in the ballot makes much difference to making progress with private Member's legislation, because some Government Whip need only shout, Object for a measure to fall, as I found out in the previous Session. Nevertheless, were the amendment accepted, it would allow time to enable my important School Transport Bill, which would provide for a yellow bus system in this country-greatly to the advantage of children throughout the country and, indeed, the environment-to progress, or at least be debated.
	However, the difficulty is typified by the debate. The Executive, not the House, prioritise the House's time for debate. The Executive decide what will happen and put that before the House, and only the Executive are allowed to do so. Answering on behalf of Her Majesty's Opposition, the right hon. Gentleman says he is unable to commit his party to taking a different position if it were to form the Executive in future, so the Executive would still have control of the business of the House. Back Benchers of all parties do not have as much control of the House's business as I think they should have.
	All of that would be corrected if we could make progress on the proposals in the Wright Committee report. I do not intend to debate them today, because they are not the substance of the issue before us, but making progress on that would have the following two results: first, we would never in future have before us another such motion in the name of a Minister; secondly, we would no longer have rationing of days by the Executive. Instead, that would be determined by a Committee of the House. It would consider the rationale of all of this and whether it is appropriate to make the abatement which is the substance of the motion, and we would have the option to consider whether Wednesdays are a better day than Fridays for the consideration of private Members' business.
	So much is wrong with the current procedures for private Members' business. So many obstacles are put in the way of making rational progress on what may be very commendable Bills, and it appears to me that the will of the House is the last thing to be considered in respect of both the time made available for Bills and whether a Bill goes ahead. It is too simple to scupper something from a sedentary position, rather than debating matters and allowing the House to determine the result.

David Heath: I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for being inadvertently obtuse by not responding more promptly to your very clear instruction. I was attempting to say that such behaviour is typical of the Government in respect of the motion before us, as it has some of the key features: it is a motion, take it or leave it, and it has not been debated by the House until now. We have asked week after week for it to be debated. On each and every occasion that it has been listed for debate, the hon. Member for Wellingborough or one of his hon. Friends has shouted Object, and therefore it has not been debated. Had the Government wished to do so, they could have brought forward this debate at any stage in the last few weeks. It would have been in order for them to have done so. It would have been proper for them to have done so before the First Reading of private Members' Bills shortly before Christmas, but they did not do so. That is one reason why the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.
	When I was asked for the date of the Second Reading of my own private Member's Bill, I said, Tomorrow, rather than name a specific date, none of which we knew at that stage because the House had not agreed to the timetable that is the substance of the Deputy Leader of the House's proposal. Because the House had not agreed that, I did not feel that I could assume either that the House would agree to the motion or that the hon. Gentleman's amendment would not be agreed to. I found myself in some difficulty, therefore, which is why I said, Tomorrow when asked about the date for the Second Reading of my Bill.

David Heath: At the risk of repeating myself and incurring the wrath of Mr. Deputy Speaker, it is the School Transport Bill, which in my opinion is a very important Bill, because it deals with matters affecting every school child in this country, road-user safety and the inappropriate use of many vehicles on the morning school run. I am keen, therefore, that the Bill be given an opportunity, on one of these Fridays, to be debated, but I honestly do not believe that it will be if the motion is passed. But that is my misfortune. I should have arranged to be drawn No. 1 in the ballot, rather than No. 19. That way I would at least have ensured a Second Reading. However, it does not alter my view that private Members' business is important, that we should find proper opportunities to debate it and that we need to reform procedures of the House so that we do not get motions of the sort presented by the hon. Lady today.
	I agree with an interesting point that the hon. Member for Wellingborough made. I do not think that Standing Orders currently provide for the procedure that appears to be accepted by everyone and which has been used previously. I do not think that the change proposed by the hon. Lady is provided for. Now, perhaps it should be. Perhaps there should be a provision in Standing Orders relating the number of days devoted to private Members' business to the length of the Session. That would be perfectly logical and is probably a view shared by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire. There is logic in saying that there should be more days for a long Session and fewer for a short Session, and I do not think that any of us would disagree with that. However, if that is the intention, the House should decide and Standing Orders should provide for it, not for what on the face of it is the absolute opposite, which is an absolute number of days to be provided by the House-not Ministers-for the consideration of private Members' legislation.
	I am glad that we have finally had an opportunity to debate this matter. I have no idea why it had to be delayed for so long, other than the normal cloth-eared intransigence of the Conservative Front Bench- [Interruption.] I mean the Government Front Bench. I am sure that the Conservatives will be just as cloth-eared and intransigent when, and if, they ever form a Government, but we shall see-let us give them the benefit of the doubt, for the moment. However, we should have debated the matter earlier, and I certainly shall advise my right hon. and hon. Friends to make their own decisions on whether to support the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Wellingborough, because this is a House matter, not one to be determined by Front Benchers of whatever complexion.

Peter Bottomley: I am grateful to the Liberal Democrat spokesman for anticipating a possible result of the certain general election. The problem here is caused by the expiry of Parliament in May. The Government, who must have known that this was coming, ought to have suggested that there be two private Members' days in each sitting month. That would have solved the problem. It would give us roughly the 13 days that we want by working out the number of private Members' days in proportion to the number of weeks on which we are sitting.
	That does not mean that all private Members' Bills would be either discussed or necessarily passed. In memory of Eric Forth, there is what I call the Chope-Dismore choke. Any private Member's Bill has to get through this little parliamentary interest. Many of the concerns of those who promote these Bills are not about the people who object sitting down but about those who discuss the merits of the Bills and their possibilities on their feet-clearing their throats, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) did with some distinctions and effect this afternoon.

David Heath: If the amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Wellingborough were passed today, one of its inadvertent consequences would be that most of those days would be devoted to consideration of the nine Bills presented by the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) earlier today.

Sally Keeble: I am pleased to have the opportunity to debate this important subject, which has been a pressing one for people in my constituency for many years. I have pursued it through a number of different avenues, so it was with a sense of frustration that I sought this Adjournment debate. I did so because of the troubling difficulties in obtaining faith buildings in Northampton to serve our multi-faith community. This is an issue not only for Northampton, because faith communities in other parts of the country face similar difficulties in accessing sites and, in particular, obtaining planning consent. A simple search on the internet reveals a host of different disputes about planning applications for mosques, temples and a variety of other faith buildings.
	In some areas, lessons have been learned and there is some good practice. For example, in Birmingham there are proposals for needs assessments of faith communities in the city as part of regeneration work, and one borough in London has a unit to help faith communities to resolve their different issues in getting access to buildings in which to worship. However, I must tell the House that in Northampton faith communities have faced continuing difficulties in obtaining buildings in which to worship, despite the growth of those communities and the constructive role that they have played in our town for a good number of years.
	The town contains a substantial and extremely diverse Muslim community; people from different parts of the world have settled in the town and played an enormously supportive and constructive role. That community is undertaking its own census, but it is thought that the population is about 5,000 strong and it is hemmed into two small house mosques, a converted and listed house, which I believe was the town's first mosque, and a converted service station. Although that is being redeveloped in a constructive way, with classrooms and different community facilities, and it is doing a good job, it remains at heart just a service station. It is located on quite a busy street and good relations have been built up with the neighbours, but the parking and street access is not ideal.
	The town also contains two substantial and successful Hindu communities. One has a planning application pending on a site for a multi-purpose building with community uses, which in the long run would include some nursery provision and sheltered housing. That would be a big addition to the disadvantaged local community but the planning application has run into difficulties, not least as objections have been made because bats apparently fly across the site.
	There is also a small but very active Sikh community that has long since outgrown its premises, which are down a side street in quite a run-down part of town. It wanted to buy part of a former school site for a very inspiring multi-faith and community centre. The county council, which owns the site, would not deal with the community or with me, and referred the matter on to the estate agent who, after initially saying that they did not have a mandate to subdivide the site, referred the matter on to the property developer who had by then bought the site, who put the price up to such an exorbitant level that the community felt that it could not really proceed. Given that the application from the Sikh community was very much in line with the needs of the wider community of the town and would also bring benefits to quite a disadvantaged area, the county council's actions were at least questionable under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.
	It has been very impressive to see the way in which the different communities-I have listed just a few of them and set out some of the problems that they have experienced-have been prepared to jump over all the hurdles that have been put in their way. They have been very constructive in engaging with the local authorities and the development corporation to try to promote good relations and a good understanding between all sections of society and to work for the common good. Some have also joined together to work on joint projects. All the plans that they have put forward that I have seen include making available significant resources for local communities. The proposals have been outward looking, not inward looking.
	Some years ago, because of all the difficulties, I contacted a former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to ask for some duty to be put on local planning authorities to assess the needs of different faith communities when drawing up local plans for their areas. That was obviously particularly relevant for growth areas such as Northampton, which is part of the Milton Keynes and south midlands growth area. There is a real opportunity to get things right from the beginning in such communities by ensuring that there is an understanding of the needs of the existing community and of the areas from which people are likely to come into town, and that in the planning of an urban area proper provision is made for faith buildings that will meet the needs of a multi-faith society.
	I was pointed in the direction of planning policy guidance note 12, which states that the diocesan board of the Church of England should be consulted about development plans and also refers to the needs of faith communities. As I recall, about half a sentence was devoted to the assessment of the needs of faith communities. This was the slightest reference that could conceivably have been given to faith communities-just enough to tick the Done box, but not enough to make any difference. Quite soon after that, PPG12 was replaced by planning policy statement 12, and any reference to faith communities completely disappeared. I have trawled through PPS12 several times and I have also asked the House of Commons Library to see whether it can find any reference in any of the planning guidance to the needs of faith communities. The Library says that it has not been able to find anything at all, and neither have I.
	Some of the guidance in Creating Strong, Safe and Prosperous Communities says that faith groups should be key and respected partners of the local authority. That seems to me to be a way of paying lip service to the importance of faith communities without ensuring that they have the one thing that faith communities want-a place, with facilities, in which to worship.

Andrew Pelling: I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. Will she allow me briefly to give some perceptions from Croydon, an authority which supports faith communities in finding premises? There are some good examples of the benefits of local authorities playing such a role. An attractive church in Croydon is now used by the Jaen community. Unfortunately, there are also examples of important faith communities, which can build strong communities, not being well cared for. Black churches end up in industrial buildings or find themselves being heavily opposed, as happened in Bromley in the neighbouring constituency, when a black church moved into an old cinema in Upper Norwood. Finally, the Shi'a community in Croydon finds itself without any faith building. It is important to support the various Muslim communities in times of great stress within society and show how well we respect different faiths.

Sally Keeble: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman's point. He illustrates why I sought this Adjournment debate. Society has changed substantially. With an established Church and a range of different faiths, we need to ensure that the needs of all the faiths are respected, not by providing handouts, but by making sure that difficult issues are managed properly, recognising that there are disputes between faiths sometimes and that there are different expressions of the same faith. We cannot say that there is one Muslim community so it needs only one mosque. There are different patterns of worship and different ways in which people want to express their faith.
	The hon. Gentleman is right to say that for some communities, starting off in an old building and converting it may be adequate. One of the mosques in Northampton started off in a house which is listed. The community has long since outgrown it and, partly because the building is listed, there is nothing much that anyone can do with it. We should recognise that as faiths become more established and grow in numbers, the community will want to move somewhere else. One that starts in a back street might want a different type of building, and one that starts on an industrial estate might find that that is not an appropriate place and want to find somewhere else.
	It is important that the local authority has ways to manage that. There is some good practice around the country, which the Government could examine and build on so that we ensure that people who come to this country and who bring with them their faith and their set of beliefs find that that aspect of their culture is respected and given its due place. Faith is an essential part of any community-an expression of its beliefs and values. I do not see how faith communities can be respected, as the guidance recommends, without ensuring that they are able to buy or build the facilities that they need for the pursuit and expression of their faith.
	Let me give an example, which taught me many years ago about the importance of faith buildings. When I was a newspaper reporter in South Africa, I went to Ladysmith in KwaZulu Natal to meet a mosque builder. He was born in India and as a boy worked for a mosque builder there. He came to South Africa as an indentured labourer to work in the sugarcane fields of KwaZulu Natal. Years went by, and when the Indian community in the area became more established, its members wanted a mosque. Because of apartheid, they could not go abroad to find someone to design it. The man came forward and said that he had worked as a mosque builder as a boy, and he could still remember the designs for the mosque. He drew them, and from those plans the beautiful mosque in Ladysmith was built. Indeed, he went on to build others throughout the country. The old man was a contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi; he worked with him, and he had been banned by the apartheid regime. When I met him, he was very old and almost completely blind, but he had left a wonderful legacy of amazing buildings that celebrated his faith and were a focal point of the community. I do not understand how, in the middle of apartheid South Africa, the Muslim community could manage to build that absolutely beautiful mosque, yet in tolerant, multiracial Britain my constituents have to worship in a converted service station or in a listed building, which is probably a fire risk when crowded out, as it so often is, during Friday prayers.
	The problem is not due to a lack of money, because nobody is asking for any handouts and, as the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) knows, the communities are all more than capable of raising money to construct such buildings. It is due to bureaucratic inertia, a lack of relevant guidance and procedures and a failure to understand the importance to faith communities of somewhere to worship. Our country has a great and historic legacy of cathedrals and other buildings that celebrate our faith. There have also been battles over the years for chapels and other Christian buildings. They are as important as the greatest cathedrals not only for tourism and worship, but for making a statement about large sections of our society. Unfortunately, however, we do not do the same for the other faiths that now make up our society.
	There are funding issues, but I do not want to get into them. Religions do not qualify as charities, so they cannot access the same funding as voluntary organisations, which can register as charities. Although religious organisations and faiths can access charity funding for the non-religious parts of their buildings, such as any community or educational facilities that are attached to their place of worship, the point still remains that, for a faith, the key aspect is the ability to worship. There is a difficult issue about funding, however, and that merits further consideration.
	My real request is for the Government to include in their guidance on local spatial planning a requirement on local authorities to assess the needs of religious or faith communities, and to ensure that relevant provisions are made to meet those spatial requirements. That includes proper funeral and burial arrangements. It is impossible to dictate what kind of building goes where, but I have listed a few examples of buildings, and the hon. Gentleman listed in his own area several that would meet the needs of different groups, including the number and type of mosques. However, space needs to be allocated, and faith communities need to be engaged in a process so that they can make the best and most appropriate use of those spaces. They also need to be assured that their contribution to community cohesion will be properly recognised in the planning process.
	It seems a complete nonsense that a former school site, which is therefore in public ownership, having been used for public service, should be sold to a property developer on which to make a profit, while a faith community, which would have provided social cohesion and facilities for a disadvantaged local community, should be denied the chance even to try to buy a small fraction of it. Particularly in growing towns like Northampton, there is an opportunity to get things right. We must ensure that as local authorities and development corporations plan the schools, hospitals and infrastructure that they need, they recognise not only that people bring along their faiths and their belief systems, which are an important part of their community, but that those needs, as well as people's educational, health and other social needs, must be met.
	The former half-sentence included in PPG12 was certainly inadequate, but that half a sentence was better than nothing. I was extremely sorry that the already small recognition in the planning system of the needs of faith communities was completely deleted when PPG12 was cancelled. I was also sorry that when the Department was approached, rather than building up the requirement, it was just deleted.
	The Government do not need to go out to huge consultation before drawing up some guidelines, which I hope they will do as a result of this debate. They should make a commitment to include in the planning guidance a requirement for local planning authorities, in undertaking development plans for the spatial needs of urban areas, to be obliged to assess the needs of the faith communities and to make proper provision in those plans for those needs. Authorities should be required to have a proper structure in place and to undertake proper consultation with the faith communities. The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 provides an example. Proper recognition could be made of the real contribution of faith communities to the material benefit of local communities. This should be properly recognised, progressed and protected.
	I cannot tell my hon. Friend the Minister how important this is for the communities that have played such an active role in Northampton, and I am sure that the same applies to other towns throughout the country, which so far have not been able, despite their best and most strenuous efforts, to get what they perhaps want most of all-a place where they can meet as a community and worship. They need a proper landmark and tribute paid within their towns to the beliefs that they hold dear and that define their community.

Sally Keeble: My hon. Friend is not in any way a poor substitute; she knows a lot about planning. However, PPS12 contains nothing at all about faith communities. It is absolutely right that there should be debates in the local strategic partnerships and elsewhere, but I have found that that is all that happens. There have been lots of debates in the development corporation, for example, but we need action. There should be a statutory duty in the planning process to consider and to provide for the needs of faith communities. There must be a clear requirement in the process that those needs are considered and dealt with.

Barbara Keeley: Those points have been strongly made, and I will ensure that DCLG Ministers take them on board.
	It is clear that, even as the planning policy structures stand, they should be taking into account issues such as access for faith communities to land and buildings to allow them to follow their faith according to whatever form of witness they decide to adopt. There should be provision for places of worship, just as there is for child care, play and all the other things that are taken into account alongside the obvious factors such as industry, employment and the more standard parts of the national planning policy. The planning process is not meant to be one size fits all, but local authorities-county and city councils-should be taking account of the needs of their own communities.

Barbara Keeley: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention.
	The notes for the Minister's speech refer to various aspects of planning controls. I remember that when I was an elected member of local government and responsible for a town centre, I found dealing with planning controls to be one of the most frustrating aspects of that role. We constantly found ourselves battling with the system. Whatever the law says, it tends to be the planning officers who have a great deal of say over such matters.
	Whether the existing law is helpful or not, it says that buildings such as schools and public halls should be able to be turned into places of worship, just as they can be turned into day centres, crèches, health centres or whatever. My hon. Friend highlighted a key aspect of the issue when she described the wider benefit of those measures to community cohesion. I recently attended the opening of a new building for the Methodist community in Boothstown in my constituency. It will be a genuinely multi-use building. In fact, funding was obtained for it on the basis that it would not just be a place of worship-useful though that is-but double up as a resource that would be of considerable benefit to the wider community. That was absolutely key. If that point is not getting across the local authority in my hon. Friend's constituency, it should be. Her point is well made, because faith communities are not only providers of sacred and secular space for people, but a key resource in communities, particularly for newly arrived communities or communities that are working to establish themselves.
	There have been publications recently on faith buildings, but the key thing is to take away the very strong point that in PPS12, we appear to have guidance that does not recognise, in even half a sentence, the need for regeneration bodies or other partnership bodies to take into account the needs of faith communities. We have heard some excellent examples in the debate of where PPS12 is falling down, and we should take my hon. Friend's points back to the Department.